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Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Mutated Kim Jong-un Bust...

Or at the very least a Bloater from the video game Last of Us!

I saw this on Facebook in December, and also saw that there was a pre-order for it from the artist, John Schuster in the USA. I thought it looked interesting and not your everyday bust that people paint up. And figured why the heck not right!

Of course I had no idea what a Bloater was, or anything to do with that game, but it was still pretty cool to paint up.

I have to state up front though that the casting was pretty poor. I had to do much more than normal amounts of clean up including removing resin bubbles, excess resin blobs, removing what could be seen as a tear in the molds where the resin built up ( or paint them into the skin like they are warts or something ). And the mold line along the back of the head was pretty severe that I could only shave it down so far before it began to take away some of the details.

Oh and the sides and back sections are really rough. I really should have spent more time with a sander on it, but the resin cloud that was growing from cleaning was already quite large.

So although I went forward with mass painting speed on it ( cause I was still super interested in the design ) I didn't go as far with it as I might have due to the cast unfortunately.

My idea for it as soon as I saw it though was that the leaves were lettuce or cabbage leaves. And that he had a massive growth happening that was taking him over ( this was before I knew it was an actual enemy in a video game ) and turned him into a vegatable zombie! And that is why I went with the green leafy bits, and the paler purplish tones for the skin. Something more dead like..

I think my plan for it came out well enough, more so considering that I painted it over a couple of hours last week or so..

There were 2 main things I wanted to test while painting this piece up though, and that was firstly the varnishes to create different textures.

Such as on the skin I kept it matte and flat, whereas on the leaves I made it a bit more shiny, and wet looking. And for the mouth and inner sections of the leaves I made it high gloss to give a really big shine. Not sure if it turned out completely like I would have liked, but for the tests it worked nice enough.

This was something that I have always wanted to give a try to, and had all the components at home already, but just never found the right moment to give it a shot! So with not much to lose here, I figured now is as good of a time as any!

I liked how it worked out, and now looking at the photos, it pooled a bit with the still water below his bottom teeth to give an interesting effect. Dunno if I could ever replicate it, but it was cool all the same here.

In the end, it was a cheaper bust to purchase and obtain. Something that I would recommend to others if you are a fan of the genre, or like strange and weird busts like this one. And have some time and patience for the clean up of the pieces ( something that I just don't have these days apparently! ).

The bust is up for voting on Putty&Paint, and surprisingly is doing fairly well! I think it is more friends giving friendly votes more so than anything else.. as some of my closer painter buddies are looking at it and going WTF?!?!?! Or saying that I could do better. Which maybe I could, if motivation rears it's ugly head once more :)

Hope you enjoyed it, and now back to something like a Dwarf or perhaps Portal paint off madness!

Cheers mate.. I have seen another version that looks more like the original bloaters... and I did have to research what they were before I started painting, but the colors were already chosen prior to me painting though. Had an idea, and stuck with it!

Yeah.. it was pretty strange seeing it up on my FB feed where I picked it up from.. but sadly not the strangest? :) Glad you like the green sections.. they were meant to be the focus, so happy it worked :D